


Origins

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26319532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: "It had taken him a few years after Blue Jay Woman’s death to find Leah, a woman so selfish and stupid he was certain he could never really love her. But love wasn’t necessary for the mating bond - acceptance was, trust was - and love was a bonus he couldn’t afford."
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Comments: 5
Kudos: 211





	Origins

**Author's Note:**

> This has limited historical accuracy beyond what Google could give me.

When Bran and his son were brought to the tent – a more elaborate creation than the others they had passed – they found the Alpha seated at a table, mending a shirt. The tent was cluttered – a small bed, a table, two chairs and a stool. Nothing that couldn’t easily be transported on the wagons that Bran and Sam had seen. This pack was one of the few travelling packs that roamed the Great Plains, never settling for long. They had been lucky to come across it.

The Alpha grunted when introductions were made. He was a short, stocky man – with a full head of rich chestnut hair and big, almond eyes. His lips were thin. “I’ve heard of you, Bran Cornick.”

Bran remained impassive. Every werewolf pack within the Spanish territory was currently under his dominion and news of this unusual arrangement had been spreading eastwards, faster than even he had predicted. He had no plans, currently, to expand further but had found it useful to not convey that with every new Alpha he met. Better they stood in front of him, afraid of what he intended.

What the news wouldn’t have told them was that each of the western packs had been brought under Bran’s control for a reason, whether it be to facilitate further trade agreements, or to provide additional support for the minor skirmishes that continued to occur with the vampire seethes. It was a collaboration network, not a kingdom. There was no tithe, no taxes. There was nothing to be afraid of, except for Bran himself.

“We’re not here for that,” Bran said, voice low.

“What are you here for then?”

Sam stepped forward, knowing that his father’s grip on patience was reaching the end of his tether. They had been to countless packs since Bran had decided it was time for him to mate again. Months on the road, Bran’s heart and mind still sore from his loss but his Beast too close to the surface. Sam alone knew what potential the Beast had to destroy this land. “We’re here to offer marriage to one of your females.”

The Alpha’s eyebrows shot up. “Which one?” he asked, confirming the information they’d had that there were several females in Hendriksson’s pack.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Sam said, glancing at his da, a small smirk on his face.

“Females few and far between,” the Alpha said, frowning. “Useful to us.”

Sam inclined his head. “We are prepared to offer a settlement. Providing our needs are met.” He quoted a sum that made the Alpha choke.

“For that you can have two. I’ve summoned my mate,” he said. “She can introduce you.”

The woman who entered the tent next eyed both Bran and Sam with suspicion, if not outright dislike. She came to her husband’s side. She was deceptively petite, with dark braided hair and eyes the color of coffee beans. She was surprisingly not very dominant. A love match, Bran presumed.

“I can’t spare them,” she said, to her husband’s irritation.

“Ida…”

“I _can’t_. Besides,” she sniffed, “most of them have already made _agreements_ within the pack.”

Bran twitched in irritation. She was lying. He looked at Sam. “Let’s go.”

The Alpha, seeing much needed gold about to walk out his door, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “ _Wait_. At least, meet them. Perhaps their agreements won’t seem too inflexible,” he said, this last to his wife.

Ida looked unconvinced. She gave Bran a look that suggested she didn’t think much of him – Bran never walked into a new pack showing himself for what he really was – and then shrugged. “Fine. It’s wash day. They’re at the river.”

*

There were four females working down by the river. Washing was hard work. Their dresses and aprons were pulled up between their legs and tucked into belts at their waists as they stood in the water, laughing and shouting at each other as they soaped and scrubbed clothes in the river.

Bran looked at them. Even from fifty yards away, his wolf dismissed them. None would be his mate. With a small shake of his head, he conveyed this to Sam, who sighed.

Three men rode up behind, emerging from the trees on horses trained to carry werewolves. No, Bran revised, two men, the third a woman who was wearing pants and a shirt. His eyebrows raised.

All three were in something of a disreputable state, including the woman, who had a cut clotted above her full top lip. Big, blue eyes stared down at him and then dismissed him.

Bran’s wolf sat up.

“Leah,” Ida snapped, furiously, “I _explicitly_ forbade you from leaving your tent.”

The woman leaned forward on her horse, ignoring her Alpha’s mate. The big eyes looked brightly down towards her Alpha. “Alpha, we just met with four Britches, who expressed their disapproval of our presence so near their territory.” She smiled and she had white, neat teeth.

Her Alpha sighed. “I see you have already conveyed a response.”

“Well, we weren’t going to just let them disapprove of us unnecessarily,” she said. On either side of her, her two male companions smiled.

Alpha Britches had a neighboring pack that, Bran supposed, was quite close to where this pack was temporarily based. Defining clear territories was one of the first things Bran had done with his Alphas. Disputes over land were common and an unnecessary use of everyone’s time and energy. This land was plenty big enough for all of them.

“Are they alive, at least?”

Leah tilted her head to the side. “We were very careful,” she said.

From the noises that the men on either side of her made, that wasn’t strictly true.

“You’re to go back to your tent immediately,” Ida said through her teeth. “Immediately.”

“Do as she says, Leah,” her mate reiterated, as if his mate’s word wouldn’t necessarily mean that the woman obeyed.

“You can have that one for free,” Ida bit, looking at Bran as the horses and their riders moved off. Bran watched the woman – Leah – raise in her saddle slightly, as if she had heard the comment. 

Sam snorted. “I think that’s unlikely.” He glanced at his father, expecting to find him in agreement and jerked when he saw this was not the case.

Bran smiled toothily. “For free, you said.”

“Da…” Sam groaned.

Ida sneered, looking between them. “She won’t have you. She’s a selfish little bitch who does what she pleases and _he_ lets her.” This last was said over her shoulder to her mate as she stalked off, tossing her head furiously.

Alpha Hendriksson bared his teeth, perhaps at his mate’s language, perhaps at the accusation. “She’s not wrong,” he admitted, however. 

“Why do you let her?” Bran asked, interested.

Hendriksson looked away, down to the water where the four other females had stopped to watch the drama unfold. “She reminds me of my daughter.”

Bran and Sam exchanged a look.

“Come. You can meet her. If we’re lucky, she’ll have dressed more decently.” He shook his head and nodded back to camp. “Ida confiscates everything she can get her hands on but somehow she replaces it all. Doesn’t like women’s work. Won’t help with the cooking, the washing.” He raised his eyebrows at Bran. “Still interested?”

More and more, thought Bran.

*

As they approached the camp, they could hear the screaming. Name calling. Arguing.

“One moment,” Hendriksson muttered, stalking towards the tent where the noise was coming from. He opened the flap, ducked inside, and roared at them to stop.

There were some whispered, furious words. Then the sound of a hard slap.

“You’re insane,” Sam murmured to his father. “You cannot seriously be thinking _she_ would make a good fit.”

“That’s exactly it,” Bran said, baring his teeth. “She wouldn’t.”

*

Hendriksson came out of the tent. “You can go in. Ida will stay,” he said, with a nod to proprieties that surprised Bran.

Bran ducked inside. The tent had five bedrolls, a small table and a stool and a trunk. It smelled of female werewolves. They all, apparently, shared a space. He would lay down good money to bet that the bedroll in the far corner, yards away from the others, was hers.

Hendriksson’s mate was sitting on the stool, hands clasped in her lap. Leah, dressed now in a homespun blue gown and petticoat, linen apron tied around her waist, was standing to one side mulishly, her lips pulled into a sulky pout. There was a fading red mark on her cheek. Bran's wolf didn’t like that.

She was, expression aside, extremely lovely. Big summer-sky blue eyes that Bran had noted earlier and dark golden hair, streaked from the sunshine. She had a straight nose and plump lips. She was tall, as tall as Bran, even, and slim. Not much bosom to speak of, though enough to show she was female. She stood straight and proud, haughty as a queen.

“Are you _quite_ finished, sir?” she demanded tartly.

It had been a while since Bran had been around a woman, even less since he had been around a woman like this, a woman with tender European sensibilities. She had probably been born in America, he thought. She _felt_ young to him. Perhaps only a handful of decades old.

“I apologize,” he said, with a half bow to both Leah and Ida, scowling at him from the corner.

Leah bared her teeth at him, eyes flashing. She did not like him. Not one bit.

Bran was going to have her, he thought with sudden, blinding clarity. He glanced over to Hendriksson’s mate. “May I approach? I’d like to know if our wolves are compatible.”

Ida waved a hand, giving him permission, as if he couldn’t possibly have taken it without her by your leave.

Leah vibrated with tension as Bran came near her. He could feel her restless wolf spirit, clear as day, pushing and pulling. She was dominant – not as dominant as he, or Sam, or even as his young son was. But still strong enough. He breathed her in, felt the moment her wolf connected with his and a slow smile bloomed across his face. Yes. They were compatible.

She lowered her furious eyes, as he allowed his power to press towards her. Her cheeks were flushed. She bit her bottom lip hard.

Ida cleared her throat. “I’ll leave you now,” she said, perhaps seeing that the deal was all but done.

Bran heard the tent flap part with her departure. “You know what I want?”

“Me, apparently,” she replied, angrily. She looked to the side, not at him. She probably couldn’t.

“I want a mate. I need mate,” he amended. Better to be truthful. He let more power go, let it lick at her. Show her what it meant to stand before him. “My wolf is dangerous. More dangerous than any you would ever have met before.”

Leah trembled. “I can see that,” she said quietly, fingers gripping her apron tightly. He had frightened her.

“Good. My last mate died – I still mourn her. I will always mourn her.” Bran’s heart, as ever, squeezed painfully. “I will not… I cannot love like that again. If we mate, it will go no further than that.”

Her head moved slightly. “I don’t care about that,” she told him and it was truthful. Something in him eased. She lifted her eyes so that they focused on the end of his nose, her fear seemingly forgotten. “Ida says all the packs in the Spanish territory are yours.”

Bran smiled without humor. So that was what she cared about. That was the way her mind worked. She wanted power. He could work with that. “They are.”

She lifted her chin. “Ida also says you’re rich. Is that true?”

“I suppose that depends on what you consider to be rich.”

Leah frowned, as if this was an obvious thing. She looked around her and held out her hands. “Well, do you live in a tent?” she asked as if her surroundings disgusted her.

“Not all the time. I have a house. In the town that I settled,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting as he watched her search around the tent for more inspiration of what she could classify would make a person ‘rich’. She appeared to be struggling. He took pity on her. 

“I can buy you whatever you want. Jewelry. Clothes.” He glanced at her dress. It was ill-fitting, clearly belonged to someone shorter than she. “Clothes in whatever style you please. If that is what you want from this bargain.”

She snorted. “I only wear the men’s things to annoy Ida. Though, it is easier to ride...” she added, as if this thought had just occurred to her.

“I don’t care what you wear,” Bran said. When he wasn’t his wolf, he was at his most comfortable naked, after all. What did it matter beyond that?

She nodded, went back to chewing her bottom lip. He had a fleeting thought that he would enjoy kissing her. He dismissed it quickly as meaningless. He had been without a woman for several years; he had wanted no other. “What would you expect of me?”

“Very little,” Bran replied with perfect honesty. “Your obedience, of course.” She shrugged because that was expected, though, he thought, she’d not shown great obedience to her Alpha’s mate. “You would be an Alpha’s mate so I expect you to try to care for my people.”

Her nose wrinkled, as if this wasn’t a qualification she saw much in her own Alpha’s mate. “What – as Ida so cares for me?” she intoned disbelievingly.

“I suspect Ida cares for you more than you realize,” he murmured, noting that whatever seemed to cross her mind she also seemed to say. That could be useful.

She scoffed. “I doubt I’ll be good at it,” she told him, bluntly, again, demonstrating that honesty he had detected. She was not vain, then. Not in that way. “I can’t cook. I won’t clean. I can hunt.” Her eyes lit up with the predator’s excitement. “I can do that.”

“We’ll see,” he said, thinking that there was something very basic about her, very primal. She did not hate her wolf, he thought, like so many of their kind did. She relished it. “So it’s agreed? We have a bargain?”

“I’ll have a house? You’ll buy me whatever I want?” Leah repeated, as if this was the most important thing they had discussed.

“Within reason,” he amended, narrowing his eyes. Greed was one thing. Excess was another.

She narrowed her eyes back at him, meeting them for the first time. His wolf liked that. Her eyes flashed silver, once, as her wolf responded. “Then I accept,” she said.

He nodded. Outside, he heard the faintest sound of his son groaning. “I’ll speak to your Alpha. Pack your things,” he told her. He turned to leave.

“Wait. What’s your name?” she asked.

“Bran. Bran Cornick.”

She mouthed the words to herself. “Leah Cornick. It has a nice sound to it,” she said, with a smirk. 

*

Bran endured the first few days of the long journey home with Leah and Samuel sniping at each other. Sam – still convinced his father had made a mistake that he would come around to realizing soon – spent no time making his disapproval of Leah clear. He criticized her at every given opportunity, as if to highlight her failings to his father.

In return she was vicious-tongued and finally attacked Sam with a wicked hunting knife she pulled from under her skirts that Bran hadn’t realized she had. Bran pulled her off him, sent her to collect firewood with a slap on her behind. She went with a curled lip tossed over her shoulder.

“You did deserve that, my boy,” he told Sam, as he handed him a clean rag and some strips to bind it from the saddlebags.

“She’s useless, Da,” Sam said to him in Welsh, shaking his head, dousing the wound on his thigh with water from his waterskin and applying the rag. “Selfish and spiteful. She can’t cook. She can’t even read. She _hates_ music. Who hates music? Have you lost your mind? Couldn’t you at least have a woman who is tolerable?”

Bran smiled, shook his head. “She’s just what I need. You’ll see.” He left him and went to find her.

She was easy for him to find. Already he was attuned to her scent, though they weren’t yet mated. He would need to bed her for that. He put that thought out of his mind.

Leah was collecting kindling and was sniffing. She had been crying. He didn’t like that. He took the wood from her and turned her face to look at him. Age, for him, was something he felt, not something he saw, but with her eyes filled with tears and her face splotchy, she looked no older than a teenager. Like him, her physical appearance was quite young and would always look so. They were well-matched, in that. To humans they would look like a young couple, just starting out in married life. That would be useful.

“Try not to fall for his baiting,” he advised, releasing her.

“He’s vile,” she said, hatefully.

“He’s not. And I would appreciate it if you would not attack my family with the intent to kill.” He raised his eyebrows and she flushed. She had wanted to kill him. She had a temper.

“I’m sorry,” Leah said. She wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “He made me very angry.”

“We will have to work on you controlling that,” he mused, half to himself. He took the bundle of dry twigs and sticks from her. “Tell me a little about yourself. When were you Changed?”

“1783,” she said. “What about you?”

“A story for another time,” he said easily.

She frowned. She crouched to pick up more kindling, handed it to him. “That’s what old wolves say. Are you that old, then?”

“Yes. How old were you when you were Changed?”

“Eight-and-ten,” she replied. Leah smiled up at him teasingly, flirtatiously. He suspected she was well used to getting her way using that technique. It would not work on him. “Two hundred? Three hundred years old?”

“You were young,” Bran said, surprised, ignoring her attempts to discover his age. “What happened?”

“As far as I was concerned, a rabid wild dog broke into our home, killed my parents and then tried to kill me,” she said unhappily. “Only halfway through he changed his mind.”

“Interesting.”

“Alpha Henriksson found me. He… helped me learn control.” Then she smiled and stood, brushing her hands down her apron.

There was a story there, too, Bran thought. “He was fond of you.”

“He was less stuffy before _she_ came along.” She pouted, as if her Alpha’s mate was a trial that she had to bear alone.

Bran’s hand came up of its own accord, he touched the pad of his thumb against her protruding bottom lip. Perhaps he wasn’t as immune as he thought. Her lips parted and he slid his thumb into her mouth. She sucked, lightly, the tip of her tongue dancing against him.

Bran had intended to take her home first. Introduce her to his people. Make her his properly, in the chapel, before they mated and he brought her into his pack.

He tossed the kindling to one side and pulled her towards him. Her wolf flashed her eyes at him, a warning, and Bran growled. “Do you want this?” he asked.

Leah's mouth touched his, just a little. He could hear her pulse beating fast. “You? Yes.”

He kissed her, open mouthed. “Here? Now? Will you have me?” he demanded, knowing the answer. He pulled at her braid, kissed her again, diving into her mouth like he could drink her down.

She was nodding, kissing him back frantically. He eased her down onto the forest floor. The ground was cold and hard. He pulled at her skirts and petticoats, seeking the ties of her drawers. He felt her hands flutter to his face, his shoulders, and then the strangest thought occurred to him.

He pulled back from her. Her mouth was red and swollen, her eyes dark with lust.

“Have you done this before?” he asked, thinking of Ida sitting with them in the tent for the proprietaries. He clarified. “I ask with no judgment.”

“Umm,” she said, looking simultaneously cross and embarrassed. She did not meet his eyes. “Some things.”

“Some things,” he repeated, carefully. If she had been changed at eight-and-ten, he supposed it was probable she had not been married. But she had been a werewolf for several decades. He couldn’t imagine she had survived with her maidenhood intact. “Describe ‘some things’.”

She flushed, hotly, which made her blue eyes look bluer. “I will not!” she said.

Bran wasn’t in the mood for this display of maidenly virtue. He wanted this over with. He wanted it _done_. He took her hand and placed it on his cock, hard against his thigh beneath his pants. “Has a man put this inside of you?”

He had his answer. She looked mortified. “They tried,” she said through her teeth. “Ida didn’t hold for that. You had to be married or at least have an agreement.”

“Good grief,” Bran said out loud. Suddenly Ida’s comment on the ‘agreements’ the other females had within the pack made sense. She hadn’t been talking about marriage or matings but simply about sex. Apparently Leah had never made such an agreement. He wondered why.

“I did some other things,” she said defensively, again. She looked down and her fingers closed around him, her palm rubbing up and down, a small smirk on her face. “I’m not completely without experience.”

Bran sighed, gave himself a moment to appreciate someone else touching him. “Good. That’ll make this easier.”

He wanted to undress her, wanted to touch her bare skin, but that would have to wait. He bit over the rounded curves of her breasts through the material of her simple gown, feeling her nipples tighten into hard nubs.

The wolf was very close to the surface, as he would be during a mating. The wolf wanted to rip the clothes from her body.

Her fingers went to his shirt. “Can you take this off?”

Bran did so, bundling it up and put it underneath her head whilst her eyes went immediately to the scars on his body, curious as to what could scar a werewolf. “How…?” she asked, touching the marks with the tips of her fingers.

“Another time. Spread your legs,” he told her.

Leah swallowed and did so. He felt a very deep sense of satisfaction at the sight, at looking at her most intimate parts, of knowing that she desired him. “I’m going to put my mouth on you.”

She nodded. “I’m not… I don’t usually…” She pressed her lips together.

“You don’t enjoy that?” he suggested.

This got him a bigger nod.

“You will,” he said, confidently.

Leah prickled, as if he had disagreed with her. “Lie back,” he ordered.

She did so and if he wasn’t much mistaken, she was thinking about how she could make sure she didn’t enjoy herself to prove a point. No matter. He lay between her legs, her skirts bunched up as high as he could get them and put his face between her thighs, licking her from top to bottom in one stripe. He intended to pleasure her until she couldn’t speak. It would make taking him easier for her, though if she’d been riding all her life, there wouldn’t be any pain.

Bran took his time with her, licking and sucking and nipping at her tender pink flesh, learning the noises that she made, feeling her juices drip down his chin as she grew increasingly excited. He clutched at her bottom, round and firm, pushing her into his mouth. She began to make small, urgent sounds in increasingly frequent intervals. He focused intently on the nub of flesh that brought her the most pleasure, circling it with the tip of his tongue and then flicking it. She froze, let out a sharp, high ‘ah!’ and clenched. He felt the flutterings of her release on his face and mouth. He hummed in pleasure, kept licking until the flutterings were no more, then he slid up her body and pressed their lips together, unlacing his pants with his hands, shoving them down to finally free himself.

Whilst she was limp and distracted with her own pleasure, he guided himself to her wet entrance and slid inside her easily, smoothly, all the way until their hips kissed. 

“Ooof,” she said, blinking wide-eyed and startled at him. “That’s—ummm.”

Carefully, Bran moved within her, watching the expressions that crossed her face as he left her and then plunged back in. Curiosity, first, then frowning contemplation, then, slowly, surprised pleasure. Her eyes fluttered closed.

He would have liked to give her another release but it had been a long time for him, a long time since he had been within the clutch of a woman’s body, and he would not last. So thinking, he began pounding into her hard, feeling her start to respond, lifting her hips instinctively.

He forgot, utterly forgot, that the purpose here was the mating, the trust and acceptance that came from sex. His wolf rose to the fore and he saw Leah’s reflected in her eyes. Her lips parted and with another, surprised ‘Ah!’ she came again, just as his own released tipped him over into her. The bond between them snapped into place like it had always been there, as he was pouring himself inside her over and over again, as she clenched around him like a vice.

He held himself above, panting, for a long moment afterwards. The monster, a never-ceasing torment inside of him, was suddenly and abruptly quiet. 

Bran lowered himself down on top of his mate. And rested.

*

Now that Leah was his father’s mate, his Alpha’s wife, Sam had no choice but to mind her. With a furious look at Bran, he gritted his teeth and kept silent. Bran’s mate liked this, liked that she could snipe at him and Sam was forced to hold his tongue.

“Enough,” Bran told her, when he could see Sam was getting close to an edge he might not be able to step back from. 

She pulled back but not without resentment. That night, at their next stop, Sam Changed and made himself scarce and Bran undressed her properly and had her again. And again. And a third time. He excused himself; he had gone without for too long. She was just a body, one that belonged to him now, soft in the right places, welcoming him in.

In the morning, she was sleepy and passive and studied the way he made them breakfast, as if she was memorizing it. He caught her looking and she glanced away. He was curt with her; he preferred her difficult to this docile sweetness.

It was a three-week journey. With the horses, and the bags, they couldn’t continue on four legs and had to take the long route through the mountains.

“This is where you live,” Leah said, as they approached the town from above. “Where I live?”

She sounded delighted, as if he could possibly have been lying to her. She was even more so when she saw the house he lived in. By the standards of the growing cities on the Eastern coast of this new world, it was a modest home – a simple two-story timber-board structure with a raised front-and-back-covered decking – but given she had been living the life of a traveler for the last few decades, to her it was luxury.

Watching Leah as she walked around the building, Bran sensed Tag before he saw him, walking through the trees like a red-headed giant.

“Caught yourself one, then,” the other man said, handing him two hares as a welcome home gift.

“I did, yes.” Bran nodded his thanks for the hares and beckoned his mate over. Leah came. “Leah, this is Colin Taggart. We call him Tag. Tag, this is my mate, Leah.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, nodding.

Leah nodded back regally, slanting her eyes to the side. Tag was old and he was dominant, more than she was. As his mate, he expected she would be able to pull power for him, though the mating bond had yet to settle. When it did, he would need to work on it, make sure it suited his needs.

“Will there be a wedding?” Tag asked, looking at Bran as Leah put no effort in to engaging him. “I like a wedding.”

Bran smiled. “Yes, I expect so. Maybe when we’re settled in.”

*

Leah walked the downstairs. It was a large, single room, with fireplace, table and seating. He had books too. He already knew they would be of no interest to her; she couldn’t read. She would need to learn, whether she wanted to or not. He couldn’t have a wife who couldn’t read.

Upstairs there were two rooms. She looked into the smaller of the two, saw the carved figurines on the single shelf above the small bed. “You have a child?”

“Sometimes. When he’s not with his maternal family.”

His mate frowned. “I thought – was she human?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

It was not something he was prepared to discuss. He supposed he hadn’t considered what a new woman would think of his first mate. That she would ask. It was private. He didn’t want anyone to touch her memory.

He opened his mouth to deny her this, just as he had denied all her other personal questions, and she held up a hand. “I see. Another story. Another time. How often is he here?”

“When I’m home.”

“I know nothing about children,” she said. It was combative. Then, “I don’t intend to learn, either.”

That suited Bran fine. He hadn’t wanted to find Charles a mother. He’d had one, one that could never be replaced.

Leah went into the other room, his bedroom. “Did she sleep here?” she asked.

Bran jerked. “No. We… this house is new.” It had been Sam’s idea to build Bran a new home. It had taken several months of hard work, months enough to occupy Bran’s feverish mind and restless wolf.

She nodded. She seemed pleased.

“Good.” She sat on the bed, smoothed a hand over the knitted blankets and animal hides and looked at him through her eyelashes. “This is decidedly more comfortable than the ground, I think.”

“It also has a door,” Bran said, closing it behind him and unlacing his pants.

*

They married on a Spring day in front of the Aspen Creek pack and the humans that came with it. He put a ring on her finger in front of God and his people and kissed her, to the general dismay of both of his sons but the genuine happiness of the rest of the pack.

Leah wore one of her new dresses – true to his word, he had driven her to the nearest, larger town and purchased whatever it was she had wished for. 

He had learnt a great deal about his mate over the weeks that had passed since they had met. He had analyzed her and compartmentalized her to the best of his ability, just as he would have done an enemy he planned to one day fight.

Her temper was her biggest weakness – she often lost it before she had properly understood the situation, seeing slights where there were none.

She was petty and spiteful and prickly with the handful of other women in the pack. She did not have it in her to be kind and Bran advised Charles to keep out of her way – his son was naughty and Leah treated him not like a child but like a werewolf male whom she expected to fight back.

She saw failure as a weakness and didn’t like to appear weak, so refused to learn for fear of failing – a cyclical behavior Bran couldn’t stand and they had many an argument over it.

If she had money, she would spend it – often on wasteful fripperies.

“I knew you would regret this,” Sam sighed after Bran had settled an extortionate bill with the general store in town.

“I don’t regret it,” Bran replied calmly.

“ _How?”_

Sam would never understand. He would never – god willing – have a beast that tore at him inside and that he would do anything to contain. Bran had no doubt that Sam had loved each and every one of his human wives but they had been fleeting life-forces, women he knew would die sooner or later, along with their children. Bran could not have that happen to him again. He could not.

Leah was his compromise. And her good qualities – she did have them – were enough for him. Her blunt honesty, her unwavering loyalty. She was a fine wolf, too. She could hunt, shoot, fish and kill without mercy. He was coming to see that with Leah, he could point at a target – human or werewolf – and she would hit it with all her force. She was a weapon in his arsenal. She would be hard for his enemies to kill.

“I never thought I’d see the day when you would put a body in your bed over a good heart,” Sam said, bitingly.

Bran glanced at his son and slapped him on the back. “It’s a very nice body,” he said, rousingly. For it was true. And he enjoyed it regularly. “And I’ll ask for one last time that you speak well of my mate or not at all, hmm?”

“Yes, Da,” Sam said meekly, seeing that his father was quite serious.

For better, for worse, Leah was Bran’s mate and his wife, for as long as they both should live. He would live with this compromise and so would everyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> At one point, I had to Google 'underwear early 1800s America'.


End file.
